Autism

Strength is often not about how your survive or why you do so but just rather the fact that you did. That despite all the misery and pain that surrounds you, you've found a way to just get through the day. To not let it overwhelm you completely even though it's wearing you down. Someone who thinks about not waking up the next day but does so anyway chooses to be strong. For themselves or others.

Who would you consider strong? The guy who can hit the hardest or the guy who can take that hit and stay standing?

Ok but I’m still going to tell someone who is not yet dead from cancer and trying to see through the treatment as strong. As it’s helping my relative stay inspired to allow the docs to help them give life a fighting chance even though medically assisted death is an option for them.

Extremely well said 👍

Give yourself credit. For each of those fallen, you've taken a step further. Be it because of them or in spite of them you saw the day after that they didn't. Call it a fluke or the result of entropy but if we'll never know the answer what's the harm in allowing yourself to be known as brave? To take that shiny little title of inspiration and make it real? Wear it like badge. Try to be brave. Try to be what you think they see rather than what you see.

The strength you are referring to is about a choice not taken.

Sure, but it implies that survival is only a matter of strength, and any who fail to survive, do so because they weren't strong enough. Circumstances of birth play a massive role. 100 equally adept children will fare very differently in Gaza and London.

adds being queer to the pile of reasons this comic might hit hard

Exactly. I have a friend who was going through it, even considered offing herself, but in the end she kept going and came out on the other side better and more mature than ever.

It took years, but she's now in a much better position, stable, and learned valuable life lessons.

She would say she was just surviving, but the desire to keep enduring takes strength, and to those of us who have never been tested like that, it is absolutely, 100% strength of character and will.

Strength sometimes is about things out of our control. I’d argue that most times. Many people are fragile because of reasons out of their control as well. We’re all the sum of circumstances, evolutionary programming, social programming etc. The choices we make, we make them because of a lot of things out of our control. It’s hard to argue we even have free-will sometimes (but I do believe we do).

To my knowledge, that is actually a thing. People with Autism, as well as people with ADHD, tend to be a bit better at some things that people without usually struggle with for one reason or another. Basically just down to differences of how their brain works with vs without Autism/ADHD. And due to those differences being all you've ever known in your experience, it's hard to know what might make something easier for you, as it just comes naturally, while other things might be completely unnatural to you compared to someone without. I can't exactly recall anything specific without doing some searching, but doing so would probably give some answers.

Also, side point but I only thought about it a bit later despite it being your first sentence. Something also common with Autism is that it's significantly easier to tell when someone else has it when you do as well, and vice versa, where people without Autism might not ever even tell unless they're maybe more familiar with it.

Do they? Have you actually asked them though?

He's asserting dominance